“Mom, could you please stop waving that thing around? I hate to say it, but you’re making me extremely nervous.”

“Ah, my bad, Bess. I did it without realizing.”

I only blushed a little (not literally, I’m a bee) as I gently set the Shaft down outside the hive wall, tucked away in a divot in the ground. It wasn't very well hidden, considering it was a gigantic metal pole, but at least it wasn't in the way.

It was quite the habit I had picked up in the days since the Yiwi Operation’s conclusion, spinning the Rotor’s shaft around in the air like one of my pens. Rather than pens, this world only had sticks for me to spin around to give me the same satisfaction. It was a bit odd that psychically spinning sticks invoked the same feeling for me, but it wasn’t a big deal for some time.

Well, not until that stick was a building-sized cylinder of fantasy metal floating precariously in the air.

But it just felt… it felt so good! None of the sticks or stones or whatever felt as satisfying to spin around. Since the Shaft was so huge, it weighed ever so slightly on my Mind, just like a pen would give that barest hint of weight on my hand. Not too heavy, not overly light. Just right.

“In any case, why are you hiding from Beatrice? Actually, how are you doing that? She always seems to know exactly what I’m doing, even if she’s focused on something else. Hm. Could you teach me your ways? Hiding from that stuck-up-“

“Er, it’s an experiment! Yup, a test of my ability to control the Link. Managing the knowledge of the humans within the Link is a challenge, you know. So I’ve gotta test stuff like this. Yup.”

“Mhm.”

What the hell? I think I’d rather you actually say something smarmy, Queen. That was a bit too brutal.

“I see…. Well, is there anything I can help you with while you’re here? I still have some time before materials begin to flow in and make me busy.”

I refused Bess’ offer politely and contented myself with watching the swarm of Construction drones buzz along the vaguely orange wall of comb. The rain that had been sporadically assaulting our hive wasn’t present at the moment, so I could see her work in all its glory. The base was vaguely hexagonal, and starting from the ground, they constructed the wall from bones, dirt, and wax. It was white and black and gray and barely orange, but as the structure rose, the cruder materials appeared less and less. Now several meters into the air, the wall had transitioned almost entirely to wax as it began to bend inward, and yet its structure didn’t crumble. I could see where some sagging had begun, which was why Bess had switched to forming a wax, bone, and metal scaffolding at the hexagon’s corners to prepare for the dome to be filled in. Her progress was great, and not just in building the wall. That leadership quality I sought was emerging in her, at least in her capability to control more and more drones.

The last few days had been… something. Instead of a period of rest and relaxation, the end of the Yiwi Operation actually increased my workload tenfold, scrambling my brain, if not my Mind. The singular focus that came as a result of the conflict was a blessing in some way, because during that time, I only had to broadly focus on one thing: winning. Now, though, I was back to being… almost aimless. Just being busy as a bee.

Before I could even do anything with the hive, Yiwi’s situation as a whole wasn’t technically done with. Of course, I delegated all the boring crap like rebuilding and such to my people, but that was far from the only thing of note. A consistent thorn in my side since the Operation’s end has been mercenaries. Those damn guys just piss me off, I tell ya.

Hordes of them have been trying to leave the city, and only barely have the mercenary leaders succeeded in holding them back. As for those who manage to leave, they either get mysteriously murdered or simply disappear. Victims of Toh, who was basically my odd-jobs man at the moment. A steady stream of Linkers was moving from the hive to the city. There they would wait in the shadows of Yemonto Co.’s headquarters until Toh either needed to chase down an unruly mercenary or simply Link a target within the city. It was effective in most cases. Most.

The sword mercenaries had become a major problem. Or, rather, they were currently being a problem. Four of the six swordfighters had died, and one of them was Linked. Thanks to the gun twins, Iiyah and Miyah, as well as a few uninjured warrior bees, the team of edgy swordmasters had fallen apart, though not without difficulty. Hm? Four plus one doesn’t equal six? If they’re all dead, how are they a problem? That’s all quite true. I recalled what happened when I Linked the last remaining edgy merc in the middle of some coprastalk field…

“Hm? Weren’t there six of them?” I asked nobody in particular. The injured gun twins and half-dead swordsman could hear me, after all. Plus, I could instantly know the truth either way. As for why I was asking, besides the Linked swordsman, there were only four other corpses strewn on the ground.

“Yes, there are six of us. Or, rather, there were before you killed us all. But we sent one on a different route some time ago to embark on the Everrail in order to reach a city further to the south where he will contact other branches of Hayrey’s. Ack! No!” the black-clad swordsman suddenly shouted, putting one hand to this mouth and another to his throat. I gave it a thought, and he stopped struggling, though it wasn’t instantaneous. For all intents and purposes, it happened without delay, but as someone who had become accustomed to the near-precognitive reactions to Link commands, it was noticeable. The strength of the Link had a drop-off, and the mercenaries weren’t that far from Yiwi where Beckham was stationed.

It was as good of a test as any I supposed.

Barring that, the information Mister sword man gave up was interesting. I thought it was strange that they were following the Yam river so closely, if they didn’t want to be found, but it wasn’t so unusual. Following a river is a safe bet for travel, and the capital of Somuia was along the same river, after all.

But seriously, this could get really bad. That one lone swordsman could upend everything just by existing! Sure, he wasn’t going to the capital, but contacting Hayrey’s other branches wasn’t much better.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Why not use the Everrail to go to the capital? It’s some sort of train, right?” I had a few inklings about the nature of the Everrail, and it was something I definitely wanted to see, if not ride. And now this mercenary’s explanation confirmed it. It was some sort of wacky fantasy train, except it had no engine. The mercenary explained that the entire track was powered by 'proprietary mechanisms' instead of having an engine, and the cars were attached to each other end to end.

And it never stopped. It was, somehow, a train that never stopped chugging, always moving at train-speed in one direction along a track that was a closed loop. And people got on it by… sitting on a platform that got sucked into the damn thing by engineers….

I wasn’t even going to question it. Sure, I was interested in how something like that could possibly work. But for Bee’s sake, I had just come from a city of flowers and mercenaries powered by a sideways wind-Mind-turbine thing. At this point, surely nothing could surprise me.

“We need to stop that mercenary. How are you two feeling?” I asked the gun twins. The battle against the sword mercenaries had been tough, and they honestly only won because of me. They had perfect knowledge of the enemy’s location thanks to the Link, which, combined with their Abilities, let them get the jump on the close range fighters from a healthy distance.

And of course, the warrior bees helped.

“We will need to rest, your majesty.”

“We can go right away, your highness.”

The pair stared at each other, and I just sighed. Twins. I have a few of my own, and let’s just say I get how it can be with them in some cases. These two should meet Bella and Belle sometime. Anyways, I was just asking to be polite; not like any of the three of them had a choice.

Oh yeah. Did I mention I was sending the last living swordsman to hunt his friend? Call it giving them a chance to reunite. I know he’s essentially a walking corpse, but I’m sure he can push through it somehow. If not, then oh well.

And so, I returned to the present with a sour expression. The chase was still going on, and there was little I could do about it now. The further all of them got from Yiwi, and by extension Beckham, the weaker the hold of the Link became. At some point, I would have to call off the hunt entirely, and then what?

Well, we had a few plans. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

And all that was just the freaking mercenaries. I didn’t even want to think about the unrest in Yiwi growing once again and all that nonsense, so I just turned my thoughts back to the hive. To what really mattered. And at the forefront of that discussion was, as Bess implied, resources. I would prefer it to be something else, but it was the grim reality of our situation. We need resources to maintain the hive, and the forest is not a good source of them. Yet.

We need wax and food. As bees, we don’t really need much else. However, in order to produce both, we need organic material. Nectar from flowers was ideal, for some reason, but other edible material would work.

For wax, the workers need to consume food to process using their Beeswax Ability. Simple enough. We could use that wax for various purposes, but we prioritized completing Bess' dome and ended up delayed wax production for other uses. And there lay the problem. Food.

Food is interesting. In terms of nutrition, the bees don’t actually need much, not like humans. The issue comes in terms of both the quantity of bees and the number of uses food has. As it stands, I don’t actually have that many bees. Not really. Beehives on Earth could contain waaay more bees than I currently had in my hive, for example. But even so, we have basically zero food production to sustain them. We’ve mostly been living off meat-honey stores for a while now, with the occasional influx thanks to squirrels.

And that’s just in terms of maintaining the bees. What about the aforementioned wax-making? That takes a buttload of food by itself, and we need an equivalent buttload of wax for the hive’s construction. Not to mention the various other uses for wax and honey in general. And so, we come upon the most damning thing of all.

Bees.

Specifically, making more. One major project Beatrice and I have been desperately trying to push forward has been leveling up the Egg Making Ability so I can pop out queens, but without huge amounts of food, that task is practically dead in the water.

And so, priority number one has been essentially that. Get more food in our dang bellies. And if the forest has nothing to offer, well. There was always Yiwi. Even now, Belle and her Gatherers were hard at work bringing nectar from Yiwi’s flowers, in addition to ferrying the flowers themselves to populate the forest. When they arrive, Bella and Belle will begin making honey in earnest, so I can grow the hive for real. No Linked humans, no squirrels, no nonsense. Only bees.

“Which is exactly why you are hiding from Beatrice.”

“Hey. Hey hey now,” I said to the air. Bess gave me a sideways glance, but didn’t comment. “I know you’re thinking the same thing as me. That Yiwi food is fucking nasty. Even Belle thinks so, and she’s obsessed with food!”

Unfortunately, as Queen said, I was hiding from Beatrice because she was trying to force me to eat Yiwi’s gross food to make bees. Was it possible? Technically yes. If I did that, the bees could be sustained by the far more efficient honey we still had stored. But it was probably a bad idea.

If the food was gross, then maybe the bees wouldn’t come out right. I had already gone through a rigorous scientific process to determine that disgusting food = chump bees.

“I see. In that case, arrangements can be made to improve the flavor with the blood of a few squirrels, if that is to your preference, Mother,” a voice said behind me, making me jump.

“Beatrice! Hi! I was just-“

“Just being a responsible ruler and overseeing the hive’s construction, I’m sure. Come.”

My head drooped, and I turned to follow Beatrice, waving goodbye to an amused Bess. Traitor! Oh well. I couldn’t delay the inevitable forever. But man, I really needed to take a page out of Beatrice’s book. Looking into her Mind, she was so organized and careful, taking into account every situation and planning for it. If I were to describe how her Mind felt like, it would be akin to a map, funnily enough. Mapping out the future.

And that was with all this extra work. Come to think of it, Beatrice had mentioned that she might like an Aide of her own when I made some queens, so maybe that was in her future. In fact, maybe that could distract her from my own stuff…

In contrast to Beatrice, my Mind was a mess. All the stuff I needed and wanted to do had sort of hit me all at once when the Operation finished, which was somewhat overwhelming. Figuring out the new food logistics, experimenting with Egg Laying, unlocking the queen subtype, just to name a few. That wasn’t including other random things like helping Beau with her apparently very impactful electricity experiments, figuring out the deal with the Combined Minds, making a body for Queen to inhabit, or dealing with the three humans toiling around the hive. And that was still a condensed list.

Above all of that loomed a shadow. Although my Mind was theoretically messy, it was actually an extremely logical and efficient mechanism that was constantly improving. The B-boxes, and specifically the CBU, were growing at a monstrous rate, almost completely out of my control. Technically, I could probably stop it whenever I wanted, but it made things so easy.

Within my Mind, the CBU ‘prototype’, as I called its more limited form, had become truly monstrous. Six hexagonal prisms sat in the corners of a vaguely hexagonal frame, connected to a massive central hexagon that pulsed with energy. It was constantly drawing more and more Mind, but what was scariest was that it seemed to have a will of its own. After all, when I absorbed Yafoot’s Mind and obtained another multiplier, instead of being reduced, the B-box usage went up. The CBU had immediately noticed the increase in energy and greedily sucked up more to stay in line with its previous growth. The size and speed of the thing couldn’t be compared to before, and it had already been like a brain combined with a computer.

Hello CBU. What’s up?

….

No answer. I mean, was it really a stretch to imagine that the CBU had become its own sentience or something? It was, like, super obvious.

“You forget it is already sentient. It is us,” Queen grumbled. Ah, there was another problem to think about. At some point when we returned to the hive, Queen had gotten all grumpy and even more terse than usual. I could tell she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, so I was letting it be for now.

Eventually I’d do something, though. When she’s ready.

I gave the central heart of the CBU a little pat and imagined it humming happily for the gesture. Thanks to it, managing the hive and the city was a cinch, barely an inconvenience. Just one example was that, without prompting, it had immediately created an automated Link instruction for the humans to replace their Linker bee after a certain amount of time was left on their individual timer. And then it sent a B-mail to the most important bees, like Beatrice, informing them of the instruction’s functionality. Thing was way too convenient.

But it was lowest on the proverbial totem pole, in terms of things to study. Resigning myself to my fate, I prepared for something I hadn’t done in a hot minute: experimenting with Egg Laying. This was actually a grand opportunity. I had never actually done any rigorous testing with what I could do regarding Egg Laying, so this push towards laying queens would be my chance to do so. I could try putting lots of Mind into making a Linker, perhaps, or document the minutiae of how a small adjustment in Mind affected the resulting bee.

Best of all, I could force Beatrice to do all of that documentation! Her larger workload would be my revenge! Revenge for making me eat gross human food!